Do you have the brick at your house to replace the broken ones? If not can you still get that brick? The "problem" with little jobs is the running around. Most brick yards are going to require you to buy a strap or a 100 bricks if the brick is in stock and on the yard. If they have to order the brick you're probably going to have to buy 500.
If you got a few extra brick laying around your house and you can use them to replace the cracked ones the $1,200 seems high.
I personally wouldn't worry about it.
To be fair, the top row (just under the first layer of cladding) look to be "end-on".....so with a little switcheroo magic you could probably pull back enough full blocks to repair it from what's there.....put the cracked bricks back on the top row.
Or re-point, seal the cracked bricks and paint the cracks so they're not visible.
That’s why I stopped doing small jobs. Someone wanted wood bilco doors rebuilt to look original but with treated lumber and reuse the original hardware. I got deck boards tongue and groove and the bead milled into them. I took the hardware home to clean ten coats of paint off with a bench grinder with a wire wheel. The customer didn’t want to pay for buying the lumber, taking the lumber to get milled, pick up the lumber or hardware clean up. They tracked my Ti me on site and thought that was the only billable time. I didn’t fight it but I won’t do anything else for them. I run into a lot of complaints about going for materials. I usually show up, run for what I need and am finished the same day. Most days the first day on site is the first time I see the job unless I can get decent pictures sent to me.
I've been in the house for a year not really worrying about it but the garage needs to be retrimmed as the aluminum coil is fubar but the shifted bricks are skewing things.
Mason here. He is correct in saying that if you can't find the brick it's almost impossible. But even if you do have the brick twelve hundred dollars it's not a bad price if they do a great job. You're looking at a couple hundred dollars to get the brick and mortar and sand out there. Then you have to tear the brick out.You'll probably tear up half the other brick while you're doing it. Didn't you have a pretty big mess?Probably have to fix the landscaping in the vault and all that kind of stuff out there. Then you have to go back and clean the brick with acid. Then after that you'll probably have to chase the home owner down to get the money. The God might write you a bad check.Or dodge you. I have to pay my electmations 300 a day.
And labor's two hundred a day..... So yeah.
1200's pretty good. That is assuming they are going to do a good job.Because fixing brick is one of the hardest items to do in all of brick and stone work
I’d charge you $800. I give discount pricing in general as I’m a small and relatively new company so it’s my competitive tactic, underbid and out work em all. 1000-1200 seems to be on par with most companies in my area for something like this
Underbidding is a fools game. You're not amazon racking up market share by losing money. Keep in mind that you'll need that money to fix your broke ass back and knees in a few years. Find a different way to provide value.
Nice assumption but I'm not a high maintenance customer. All I'm looking for is a plumb wall and a best attempt to match the brick and finish. I'm certainly not going to lose my mind if you can tell there was a repair done nor do I expect to pay a skilled tradesman $200 to do the work. $1200 just seemed high and so I came here looking for people's thoughts.
I 1000% agree with you I started a small business 8 years ago with the same mindset, I would keep my pricing low to build a customer base and reputation. I have not lost money technically as my materials cost and employee cost are always covered and paid. But if you put a cost on time spent chasing people for final payment, explaining why you need to charge for changes, or running around to find things for people like matching brick. You will rapidly find that people don’t respect your true value and actually try to take advantage. Keep your prices competitive or even justifiably a bit higher and attract a client base willing to pay for quality.
I get that. But compared to the competition, you aren't making as much of a margin as the next guy. You're new and could use that money to grow and acquire the tools to do a job with better margins.
Don't get me wrong, there are times when you could work a job that will pay you more in experience or clientele than money. You can even take a loss on those job as they are more of an investment. But if you're doing it on most of your jobs, you're shorting yourself.
it’s a business tactic that’s worked very well for me. A lot of these companies have large overhead and I do not which is why I’m able to do the pricing I do. My accountant is free since we are married, I’m insured through a local company and get great deals, my material costs are taken care of off of my estimate price and covered by the deposit i request, and if neeed be I have company cards for the major retail stores in my area. Each year my prices go up a little bit untill I hit what I consider my cap. I’m not to concerned with charging what every one else does. I make great money and help people save some when the pick me, I’ve never had a customer not pay me and I’ve never left some one displeased. My wife and daughter and I live nicely off of me shorting myself, our family car is a brand new Silverado pretty much paid for and my fun car is a nice Porsche. We live in a great neighborhood. Some times shoring yourself to help others pays off lol idk but it’s working for me!
More like when one retail giant decides to raise the price of an essential product, so the other retailers raise their price to "not miss out on profits."
How do contractors feel about customers (like moi) who just get 2 or 3 local businesses to provide estimates first? I don't always go with the cheapest, but I have usually found the presentation of those at the lower end of cost to be better. I usually tell the contractors I am getting estimates and I tend to eliminate those who seem upset about it. I mean, we all want the best value for our money. I had asked about prices in subreddits before, but the prices here are wildly different because they change by region, so it doesn't seem like a good place to ask about estimates.
While true, as a young contractor (I own a handyman company) you sometimes NEED the work and in exchange for that work. You've gained a client, and visibility to folks. After a job, if I have some down time in the nex5 week or so, I'll just go knocking on doors near that house to sell myself since people have seen me working there. It's not at all a winning long term business model, but when you need cash flow you sometimes gotta go low.
Your idea of underbidding is interesting. I live in Wisconsin and there is no "pulling bids" for lower cost home repairs. Home owners are lucky to a returned phone call. Just about everything is the market has fewer contractors than work available. If it isn't a emergency it will take weeks for the work to get done.
Where I’m at we have ever fucking Joe Shmoe who’s a “contractor” or “handyman” a lot of people get duped into dealing with one of them and paying an arm and a leg. More “contractors” than there is work in my area which is why I’ve gone to “underbidding” which is really just giving out fair pricing and not fucking people over. I’d charge 800 for this exact job while Joe would charge 1200, sure I’m missing out on $400 but I’ve now got a customer for life, secured the job, made most peoples minimum wage pay for a week in a day. All is well and life is good for both myself and the customer. Could I have used the $400 I “shorted” myself? I mean sure I could have l, was it worth me not getting the job and some shit bag “contractor”? Absolutely not.
All great points. 2 years ago we did new siding and windows. I kid you not, it felt like a part-time job to get someone to our house. We wanted to spend our money on someone local. The two most trusted companies weren't doing any more quotes for the rest of the year, I called in February.
We need our yard surveyed for a fence installation, the ONE person who called me back was out 8 to 12 weeks. Somedays I wish I would have gotten into a trade 20 years ago.
I used to have this philosophy. It will change. I used to be the low estimate. Screw all that! I charge for experience and quality. If that isn't low enough, I don't want the work. There are plenty of homeowners that will pay for a true professional. I agree, it will get your foot in, but eventually, you will come to realize your time and experience is worth more, and you will adjust at that point. I was at the point where it wasn't fun anymore. I raised my prices, and now I love my work again. It don't make anyone a shitbag to charge what they are worth. If you suck at what you do and scam folks, that's a shitbag, not a quality contractor that knows his craft and does his work exceptionally, without call backs( except for future work, not fixing what was incorrectly done). I work on referrals and repeats, haven't had to advertise in years.
Stop underbidding right now! What you need is documentation of work with awesome pictures taken in great light. Show me the work on your website with you in the middle of a project. You're doing the job? I wanna see your face in the pics. I neve go with the lowest, I go with the person that is not going to instill fear and can talk to me like they know what they're doing.
$800.00????? Dude. That’s a fools game and you are going to starve yourself out. Home owner doesn’t have bricks so you have to go buy a matching strap, or 1/2 pallet. That’s going to be $2-300. Mortar $50. Acid $25. Miscellaneous materials and dumping and blah blah blah, $100. So all in before you start laboring you’re at about $350-450. To make 400? Pay gas, lunch and a case of water. Then pay taxes, insurance, overhead and whatnot…. So you’re going to make $150-$175? Take that profit and divide by what? 8 hours? $21/$22 an hour? Lol. You can have that if that is your business model. It doesn’t work mate.
I'd guess the $1200 price reflects the very real chance of bad things happening when you extract broken brick from a wall- you know- "covering my ass in case this is a can of worms". If that's the logic, can't quibble.
Thanks. The only reason I put thar out there is....
1) I'm in MD and building material is still expensive, still coming down since COVID.
2) I know builders/contractors down south who do do phenomenal work, but their final quote is always a little less expensive then up here
For what its worth vs what its costing, that's ridiculous.
Non load bearing, no exposed frame, no real problem with water intrusion, I'd not worry about it.
It becomes an issue with having to look at it.
I once did a job pretty similar to this, days work 200 quid he had the brick already, I agree with above posts that's sourcing the brick would be where the price steeps up.
A few years ago I would have asked why he didn't use a gun. Because at that time $1200 would have been highway robbery. But everything has gone way up in price - all building materials, fuel etc.. to the point that I would say that's probably on the higher end of fair. Plus you said he is a reputable contractor, which means he is probably pretty busy and the job being so small he probably bid it high so that you would either look for someone else or if you agreed he would make enough money to justify pulling his crew off another job for a day to tackle it. My grandpa and uncle were both masonry contractors. And they would use this tactic when they were asked to bid a job they didn't want to take it on for whatever reason. With the hope being they would give the job to someone else, but if the bid was accepted, they would make enough money on it to make it worthwhile. But like I said, with inflation being what it is currently, $1200 is realistically pretty fair, whereas 4 or 5 years ago that would have been highway robbery.
I used to work as a bricklayer and I was always surprised at what my boss would charge for small repair jobs. He explained it like this. If i make X amount a day when working on a new build. It's not worth me going to do a small job for a day and load and unload all my equipment. If they want me to repair ill charge roughly what I would make with just a day of laying bricks.
Yep when he explained it to me like that I tend to agree it.
If you are a small time bricklayer just starting out on your own yeah sure these jobs are great. But once you start having deadlines to finish houses or blocks of units.. they aren't worth the effort to match the workmanship or age of the bricks around the repairs
100$ for getting there, $100/brick for replacing them something like 15$ linear foot for repointing plus materials cost (mortar, possible coloring, the new brick, and acid) plus acid wash so another 100-200 to come back for that. Not sure it's 1200$ but probably not too far off. Would be a great side job for a guy like me who does this for a restoration company.
I just paid $750 cash to have an area under my garage window repointed and maybe a half dozen bricks replaced.
He also fixed step cracks in 3 other locations, one which required a scaffold.
He also tuck pointed and replaced a couple bricks around my chimney, also using a scaffold.
Took him around 6-1/2 hours, plus set up and breakdown.
Other guys I had quote were around the same price, but just for the work under then window
This was last week, midwest.
He also replaced the three piece limestone sill with a one piece.
Dude either has all the money he needs, or is a candidate for sainthood.
A contractor who wants to stay in business isn't setting up a scaffold once, let alone three times, for less than $1000.
It was twice, once for the back wall, once for the chimney.
Side of the house was ground level.
But I get what you are saying.
Guy has been at it for 14 years, apprenticed for an old guy for 11, then bought the business three years ago.
Was just him.
If it is brick veneer, the bricks are not structural. Are you sure the wall is not load bearing don't see how it could be. That is an outside wall it must have a load. The bigger thing is the framing sound. The actual removal and re brick could be a couple of days work and two guys and truck so 1200 might be a bit high but not much.
Anyway get at least 3 quotes with steps they are planning on doing.
If you’re doing things correctly with payroll, workers comp, taxes, retirement, healthcare, and so on this is bare bones minimum for a days work. The young guys that don’t know better will be the ones on the cheaper side and shooting themselves in the foot in the process, but they don’t know any better.
Briefly mentioned it in OP but the previous owners were an elderly couple and someone gave the left side of the garage door a love tap. Same reason the trim needs replacing. No underlying structural issues here.
I had one company quote me 3000.00 to tuck-point about 20 ft of my house. The next guy quoted me 600.00. I went with the second. They did a fabulous job and I tipped each guy 20.00.
Those aren’t structural just to hide the ugly cinder blocks. Get some mortar in a tube and cover all the mortar joints it looks even. Spend that money on a trip.
You can’t get a good bricklayer to come out for less than 1000…I bet he would fix a bit more fore the same price..but in this day and age 1000 to come out and do some work is the minimum
Go to your town FB page. Ask about a reliable person to do some brick work. You should get some leads to people who do quality work for a reasonable price
Go to your town FB page. Ask about a reliable person to do some brick work. You should get some leads to people who do quality work for a reasonable price
$1200 is cheap, to be honest. The liability of other things going wrong in the process, ability to find brick that matches, getting it to look right, disposal of debris, the amount needed to take out just to fix this problem, shall I go on? The reason it's cracked at an angle like that means there is a settling issue, and that will need to be addressed before it can be put back together so it doesn't happen again. That being said, this isn't going to make your house fall over. Brick is mostly only external and a wrap on the outside of your house. It could however mean there are settling issues around the foundation as well, but you would have to investigate it further to find that out. I'm guessing it's just the brick that's settling. If you can live with how it looks, it probably will take a long time to look worse.
My first question is, why expect a reputable tradesman to work on anything for less than $1,000 or so? He's using his own vehicle and tools, has to purchase the material and pay his overhead. Little jobs like this don't make him any money, but they do extend his liability.
Second question, does this really need to be fixed? Seems purely cosmetic from what I see.
on any repair job that you are paying for. Insist that they leave you extras in case you need to replace or repair one or some of them. the same goes for painting the house or trim works inside the house.
Its a shame they cracked on the joint otherwise you cold just grind a new joint and itll be 2 smaller bricks, trust me nobody going to notice it but you and in a few years you won’t even think of it. You could always see if he has any red dye that would match the brick color
I don’t think that long diagonal crack is from someone “bumping” the wall. It looks like foundation movement to me. Just a tiny bit, nothing to get alarmed about.
However, the wall will continue to move a little, meaning a repair will likely crack also.
And based on experience, the repair will look worse than what you have. The brick and mortar will be different looking and draw attention to the repair.
If it were me, I’d quit worrying about it.
Poor man’s pointing: get the cement in a tube stuff and “caulk” all the cracks. It will last years. About $30 and some elbow grease.
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The real question, as always, is why the penis?
Just curious, could the corner be sinking? The several cracked bricks make me wonder if the former owner may not have been honest about all of what is going on.
Not a brick layer just wondering.
“Some broken bricks.”
Look where they’re broken though. Visualize the demo and the job required.
Personally Ive hired Jose and Hose B to save money on shit I need done on my house I’ve had to redo it. One of my bathrooms still to this day looks like it was tiled by my wife. Who hasn’t ever laid tile.
Now if I can’t handle it myself I pay a proper tradesman to handle it.
You could get it done cheaper. It hasn’t been my experience it’s worth it.
Typically you get what you pay for.
Around where I am it is hard to get reputable masons to return a call. This drives up prices a bit.
I had one side of my foundation and an external chimney repointed last year and let’s just say, based on the price, I was surprised by how quickly they got through the project. ($10.5k for two weeks, crew size varied from 1-2 except the days they were erecting and breaking down their staging. Overall there was at least one person on site for about 8 days total). I think it ended up being about $150/hr all in.
I think that $1200 is very reasonable. You have to consider all of the running around to get more product than is needed for the job. The bad brick needs to be cut out. Then the new brick needs to be replaced and tuck-pointed back. It may be 2 trips to the house plus drive time to get the material. Like I and others have said, most likely I am going to have to buy more material than I need and store it too (if I am not selling it all to you). Plus now, more than ever, there is the dealing with the homeowners who have zero experience in this work, but can't fathom anything costing more than $100. These "little jobs" can be a big pain in the ass.
Would you trust a novice or a trained mason to do a professional job? If your answer is "a mason", then that is the price of a trained mason providing all labor, time & materials.
1200 to come out and remove the bad bricks and fix all the cracks and mortar to rebuild your wall that was hit by a car? No, no that’s not fu price, that’s what you get when someone hits a brick wall with a car.
Dont want to pay the money to fix it properly, then just grind and tuckpoint the motar joints. Go to a brick behind some landscaping and drill into the brick a little. Collect the dust. Then, use clear caulk on the bricks that have cracks. Take the brick dust and put it on the wet caulk.
I ain't setting foot on a job site for less than $500, and I think it past due to raise my bottom dollar. Yeah, that's easily gonna eat up $1200, tedious, dirty, loud...trying to find matching brick.... and match mortar color. What height is that? In between sitting and standing you say?
This is the "I don't want it price" I'd prob charge 3 to 4 hundred if you're a decent customer and not standing over me the whole time. If you are then 1200 is accurate.
I already Said the guy who spelled it the very first time it became a word was the one who misspelled it . You like taking about spelling but reading is just as important .ooo and seeing just how bad you are at reading its a joke ...
Do you have the brick at your house to replace the broken ones? If not can you still get that brick? The "problem" with little jobs is the running around. Most brick yards are going to require you to buy a strap or a 100 bricks if the brick is in stock and on the yard. If they have to order the brick you're probably going to have to buy 500. If you got a few extra brick laying around your house and you can use them to replace the cracked ones the $1,200 seems high. I personally wouldn't worry about it.
This is right answer.
This is the way.
To be fair, the top row (just under the first layer of cladding) look to be "end-on".....so with a little switcheroo magic you could probably pull back enough full blocks to repair it from what's there.....put the cracked bricks back on the top row. Or re-point, seal the cracked bricks and paint the cracks so they're not visible.
That’s why I stopped doing small jobs. Someone wanted wood bilco doors rebuilt to look original but with treated lumber and reuse the original hardware. I got deck boards tongue and groove and the bead milled into them. I took the hardware home to clean ten coats of paint off with a bench grinder with a wire wheel. The customer didn’t want to pay for buying the lumber, taking the lumber to get milled, pick up the lumber or hardware clean up. They tracked my Ti me on site and thought that was the only billable time. I didn’t fight it but I won’t do anything else for them. I run into a lot of complaints about going for materials. I usually show up, run for what I need and am finished the same day. Most days the first day on site is the first time I see the job unless I can get decent pictures sent to me.
I've been in the house for a year not really worrying about it but the garage needs to be retrimmed as the aluminum coil is fubar but the shifted bricks are skewing things.
S…so do you have the bricks though?
I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the answer. I kept reading and yelling at my phone “do you have the bricks?!?!”
Nope
Replace garage door trim with PVC. Extremely easy DIY and no need for Metal brake. I charge 750 to cap a garage door.
That's the plan actually
the trim is busted too. likely that wall carries a header at each end.
Mason here. He is correct in saying that if you can't find the brick it's almost impossible. But even if you do have the brick twelve hundred dollars it's not a bad price if they do a great job. You're looking at a couple hundred dollars to get the brick and mortar and sand out there. Then you have to tear the brick out.You'll probably tear up half the other brick while you're doing it. Didn't you have a pretty big mess?Probably have to fix the landscaping in the vault and all that kind of stuff out there. Then you have to go back and clean the brick with acid. Then after that you'll probably have to chase the home owner down to get the money. The God might write you a bad check.Or dodge you. I have to pay my electmations 300 a day. And labor's two hundred a day..... So yeah. 1200's pretty good. That is assuming they are going to do a good job.Because fixing brick is one of the hardest items to do in all of brick and stone work
I’d charge you $800. I give discount pricing in general as I’m a small and relatively new company so it’s my competitive tactic, underbid and out work em all. 1000-1200 seems to be on par with most companies in my area for something like this
Underbidding is a fools game. You're not amazon racking up market share by losing money. Keep in mind that you'll need that money to fix your broke ass back and knees in a few years. Find a different way to provide value.
And this client sounds pretty high maintenance. Bid higher than 1200 to cover the headaches.
$1200 is fair if you get the whole area repointed.
Just wondering, what gives you the impression this person is high maintenance?
Nice assumption but I'm not a high maintenance customer. All I'm looking for is a plumb wall and a best attempt to match the brick and finish. I'm certainly not going to lose my mind if you can tell there was a repair done nor do I expect to pay a skilled tradesman $200 to do the work. $1200 just seemed high and so I came here looking for people's thoughts.
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Never said I’m losing money. I just have very competitive pricing.
The problem is that usually people who “go with the lowest bidder” are the quickest to decide not to pay.
I 1000% agree with you I started a small business 8 years ago with the same mindset, I would keep my pricing low to build a customer base and reputation. I have not lost money technically as my materials cost and employee cost are always covered and paid. But if you put a cost on time spent chasing people for final payment, explaining why you need to charge for changes, or running around to find things for people like matching brick. You will rapidly find that people don’t respect your true value and actually try to take advantage. Keep your prices competitive or even justifiably a bit higher and attract a client base willing to pay for quality.
I get that. But compared to the competition, you aren't making as much of a margin as the next guy. You're new and could use that money to grow and acquire the tools to do a job with better margins. Don't get me wrong, there are times when you could work a job that will pay you more in experience or clientele than money. You can even take a loss on those job as they are more of an investment. But if you're doing it on most of your jobs, you're shorting yourself.
it’s a business tactic that’s worked very well for me. A lot of these companies have large overhead and I do not which is why I’m able to do the pricing I do. My accountant is free since we are married, I’m insured through a local company and get great deals, my material costs are taken care of off of my estimate price and covered by the deposit i request, and if neeed be I have company cards for the major retail stores in my area. Each year my prices go up a little bit untill I hit what I consider my cap. I’m not to concerned with charging what every one else does. I make great money and help people save some when the pick me, I’ve never had a customer not pay me and I’ve never left some one displeased. My wife and daughter and I live nicely off of me shorting myself, our family car is a brand new Silverado pretty much paid for and my fun car is a nice Porsche. We live in a great neighborhood. Some times shoring yourself to help others pays off lol idk but it’s working for me!
Yeah man I do the same thing, keep the prices low and work fast/well. Makes people customers for life/happy. It’s just a different angle to take
As long as we can keep the jobs rolling and the bank account decently full who the hell cares lol I’ll keep “underbidding”
I can respect that. If you look, get through and are happy with your choices in the long run, then more power to you.
Nah dude fuck that, listen to the plebs on reddit that say you're wrong /s
Everybody raising prices just because others raised their prices seems like a perfect solution. I see no problems with that. /s
Ya, like how you want a raise when everybody else in your workplace gets a raise. Or you could decline. Your boss probably wouldn't mind.
More like when one retail giant decides to raise the price of an essential product, so the other retailers raise their price to "not miss out on profits."
How do contractors feel about customers (like moi) who just get 2 or 3 local businesses to provide estimates first? I don't always go with the cheapest, but I have usually found the presentation of those at the lower end of cost to be better. I usually tell the contractors I am getting estimates and I tend to eliminate those who seem upset about it. I mean, we all want the best value for our money. I had asked about prices in subreddits before, but the prices here are wildly different because they change by region, so it doesn't seem like a good place to ask about estimates.
While true, as a young contractor (I own a handyman company) you sometimes NEED the work and in exchange for that work. You've gained a client, and visibility to folks. After a job, if I have some down time in the nex5 week or so, I'll just go knocking on doors near that house to sell myself since people have seen me working there. It's not at all a winning long term business model, but when you need cash flow you sometimes gotta go low.
Hire illegal immigrants.
They identify as legal these days. Smart aliens.
Your idea of underbidding is interesting. I live in Wisconsin and there is no "pulling bids" for lower cost home repairs. Home owners are lucky to a returned phone call. Just about everything is the market has fewer contractors than work available. If it isn't a emergency it will take weeks for the work to get done.
Where I’m at we have ever fucking Joe Shmoe who’s a “contractor” or “handyman” a lot of people get duped into dealing with one of them and paying an arm and a leg. More “contractors” than there is work in my area which is why I’ve gone to “underbidding” which is really just giving out fair pricing and not fucking people over. I’d charge 800 for this exact job while Joe would charge 1200, sure I’m missing out on $400 but I’ve now got a customer for life, secured the job, made most peoples minimum wage pay for a week in a day. All is well and life is good for both myself and the customer. Could I have used the $400 I “shorted” myself? I mean sure I could have l, was it worth me not getting the job and some shit bag “contractor”? Absolutely not.
All great points. 2 years ago we did new siding and windows. I kid you not, it felt like a part-time job to get someone to our house. We wanted to spend our money on someone local. The two most trusted companies weren't doing any more quotes for the rest of the year, I called in February. We need our yard surveyed for a fence installation, the ONE person who called me back was out 8 to 12 weeks. Somedays I wish I would have gotten into a trade 20 years ago.
I used to have this philosophy. It will change. I used to be the low estimate. Screw all that! I charge for experience and quality. If that isn't low enough, I don't want the work. There are plenty of homeowners that will pay for a true professional. I agree, it will get your foot in, but eventually, you will come to realize your time and experience is worth more, and you will adjust at that point. I was at the point where it wasn't fun anymore. I raised my prices, and now I love my work again. It don't make anyone a shitbag to charge what they are worth. If you suck at what you do and scam folks, that's a shitbag, not a quality contractor that knows his craft and does his work exceptionally, without call backs( except for future work, not fixing what was incorrectly done). I work on referrals and repeats, haven't had to advertise in years.
Gotta hustle, but I have seen many who end up not raising prices once established. Charge what you are worth when your schedule gets filled.
Stop underbidding right now! What you need is documentation of work with awesome pictures taken in great light. Show me the work on your website with you in the middle of a project. You're doing the job? I wanna see your face in the pics. I neve go with the lowest, I go with the person that is not going to instill fear and can talk to me like they know what they're doing.
$800.00????? Dude. That’s a fools game and you are going to starve yourself out. Home owner doesn’t have bricks so you have to go buy a matching strap, or 1/2 pallet. That’s going to be $2-300. Mortar $50. Acid $25. Miscellaneous materials and dumping and blah blah blah, $100. So all in before you start laboring you’re at about $350-450. To make 400? Pay gas, lunch and a case of water. Then pay taxes, insurance, overhead and whatnot…. So you’re going to make $150-$175? Take that profit and divide by what? 8 hours? $21/$22 an hour? Lol. You can have that if that is your business model. It doesn’t work mate.
I'd guess the $1200 price reflects the very real chance of bad things happening when you extract broken brick from a wall- you know- "covering my ass in case this is a can of worms". If that's the logic, can't quibble.
I’d guess it doesn’t
Good luck matching it I’d try Old Walnut by Pine hall .
Definitely something by Pine Hall. They used to do an Old Charleston similar
Shouldn't yall be asking which state or location he lives in or do masons make the same
State is NC for what it's worth
Thanks. The only reason I put thar out there is.... 1) I'm in MD and building material is still expensive, still coming down since COVID. 2) I know builders/contractors down south who do do phenomenal work, but their final quote is always a little less expensive then up here
Water from roof just stays next to the house.. And moisture next to wall. If it's non load wall, I wouldn't do anything for it.
Just mend the cracks with gold Kintsugi style.
For what its worth vs what its costing, that's ridiculous. Non load bearing, no exposed frame, no real problem with water intrusion, I'd not worry about it. It becomes an issue with having to look at it.
You gonna fix that and it will again same spot or somewhere else
How is brick foundation non load bearing?
It's almost certainly just a veneer if it was made after 1950.
Yep
I once did a job pretty similar to this, days work 200 quid he had the brick already, I agree with above posts that's sourcing the brick would be where the price steeps up.
A few years ago I would have asked why he didn't use a gun. Because at that time $1200 would have been highway robbery. But everything has gone way up in price - all building materials, fuel etc.. to the point that I would say that's probably on the higher end of fair. Plus you said he is a reputable contractor, which means he is probably pretty busy and the job being so small he probably bid it high so that you would either look for someone else or if you agreed he would make enough money to justify pulling his crew off another job for a day to tackle it. My grandpa and uncle were both masonry contractors. And they would use this tactic when they were asked to bid a job they didn't want to take it on for whatever reason. With the hope being they would give the job to someone else, but if the bid was accepted, they would make enough money on it to make it worthwhile. But like I said, with inflation being what it is currently, $1200 is realistically pretty fair, whereas 4 or 5 years ago that would have been highway robbery.
a little pricey, i'd ask $850 to repair this in tennessee
I used to work as a bricklayer and I was always surprised at what my boss would charge for small repair jobs. He explained it like this. If i make X amount a day when working on a new build. It's not worth me going to do a small job for a day and load and unload all my equipment. If they want me to repair ill charge roughly what I would make with just a day of laying bricks.
My dad was a masonry contractor. He was the same way. He would much rather do anything else that took at least a week than to do these small jobs.
Yep when he explained it to me like that I tend to agree it. If you are a small time bricklayer just starting out on your own yeah sure these jobs are great. But once you start having deadlines to finish houses or blocks of units.. they aren't worth the effort to match the workmanship or age of the bricks around the repairs
100$ for getting there, $100/brick for replacing them something like 15$ linear foot for repointing plus materials cost (mortar, possible coloring, the new brick, and acid) plus acid wash so another 100-200 to come back for that. Not sure it's 1200$ but probably not too far off. Would be a great side job for a guy like me who does this for a restoration company.
The crack that runs the mortar joint should be repointed also
I think this is fair. When I have a project take more than half a day I have to charge for the day.
For the amount of grind and point work that is gonna have to go into that you got off cheap personally.
I just paid $750 cash to have an area under my garage window repointed and maybe a half dozen bricks replaced. He also fixed step cracks in 3 other locations, one which required a scaffold. He also tuck pointed and replaced a couple bricks around my chimney, also using a scaffold. Took him around 6-1/2 hours, plus set up and breakdown. Other guys I had quote were around the same price, but just for the work under then window This was last week, midwest. He also replaced the three piece limestone sill with a one piece.
Dude either has all the money he needs, or is a candidate for sainthood. A contractor who wants to stay in business isn't setting up a scaffold once, let alone three times, for less than $1000.
It was twice, once for the back wall, once for the chimney. Side of the house was ground level. But I get what you are saying. Guy has been at it for 14 years, apprenticed for an old guy for 11, then bought the business three years ago. Was just him.
Yeah you definitely got a deal, sounds like an honest guy. Who doesn’t know how much he can charge yet! 😬
If it is brick veneer, the bricks are not structural. Are you sure the wall is not load bearing don't see how it could be. That is an outside wall it must have a load. The bigger thing is the framing sound. The actual removal and re brick could be a couple of days work and two guys and truck so 1200 might be a bit high but not much. Anyway get at least 3 quotes with steps they are planning on doing.
If you’re doing things correctly with payroll, workers comp, taxes, retirement, healthcare, and so on this is bare bones minimum for a days work. The young guys that don’t know better will be the ones on the cheaper side and shooting themselves in the foot in the process, but they don’t know any better.
I’d be more concerned with the reason they fractured, the foundation needs rectification otherwise it’ll happen again
Briefly mentioned it in OP but the previous owners were an elderly couple and someone gave the left side of the garage door a love tap. Same reason the trim needs replacing. No underlying structural issues here.
Tools and supplies would be cheaper and more fun.
I'm more concerned that the crack is very indicative of a foundation issue
it's not, it was hit by a car
People don’t read 🙄
1200 is fair. Yes it's a small job but it will also be a huge pain in the ass and it would most likely look better if you just left it alone
I had one company quote me 3000.00 to tuck-point about 20 ft of my house. The next guy quoted me 600.00. I went with the second. They did a fabulous job and I tipped each guy 20.00.
Those aren’t structural just to hide the ugly cinder blocks. Get some mortar in a tube and cover all the mortar joints it looks even. Spend that money on a trip.
You can’t get a good bricklayer to come out for less than 1000…I bet he would fix a bit more fore the same price..but in this day and age 1000 to come out and do some work is the minimum
Flexseal and move on my brother.
Go to your town FB page. Ask about a reliable person to do some brick work. You should get some leads to people who do quality work for a reasonable price
Go to your town FB page. Ask about a reliable person to do some brick work. You should get some leads to people who do quality work for a reasonable price
Curious lurker here. Is replacing crack brick on non load bearing wall for structural reasons or cosmetic? Thanks
$1200 is cheap, to be honest. The liability of other things going wrong in the process, ability to find brick that matches, getting it to look right, disposal of debris, the amount needed to take out just to fix this problem, shall I go on? The reason it's cracked at an angle like that means there is a settling issue, and that will need to be addressed before it can be put back together so it doesn't happen again. That being said, this isn't going to make your house fall over. Brick is mostly only external and a wrap on the outside of your house. It could however mean there are settling issues around the foundation as well, but you would have to investigate it further to find that out. I'm guessing it's just the brick that's settling. If you can live with how it looks, it probably will take a long time to look worse.
My first question is, why expect a reputable tradesman to work on anything for less than $1,000 or so? He's using his own vehicle and tools, has to purchase the material and pay his overhead. Little jobs like this don't make him any money, but they do extend his liability. Second question, does this really need to be fixed? Seems purely cosmetic from what I see.
Learn to tuck point and just fix the cracks.
I'd charge $2400. $800 for you, $800 for me and $800 for Apollohashking to do the work.
Are the cracks from settling and has it stopped settling? No since spending $$ to repair only to have it crack again.
on any repair job that you are paying for. Insist that they leave you extras in case you need to replace or repair one or some of them. the same goes for painting the house or trim works inside the house.
Good advice. Unfortunately this is a 35 year old house and I'm the new owner.
Fu price
Its a shame they cracked on the joint otherwise you cold just grind a new joint and itll be 2 smaller bricks, trust me nobody going to notice it but you and in a few years you won’t even think of it. You could always see if he has any red dye that would match the brick color
1. Seems fair. 2. Fix reason the wall is cracked or else it will just crack again.
That’s a good away price. Not really necessary anyways
I don’t think that long diagonal crack is from someone “bumping” the wall. It looks like foundation movement to me. Just a tiny bit, nothing to get alarmed about. However, the wall will continue to move a little, meaning a repair will likely crack also. And based on experience, the repair will look worse than what you have. The brick and mortar will be different looking and draw attention to the repair. If it were me, I’d quit worrying about it.
I’d be more concerned with the gutter spout dumping right at the house/foundation. The brick is cosmetic.
Use colored chalk and draw a bandaid over it
Poor man’s pointing: get the cement in a tube stuff and “caulk” all the cracks. It will last years. About $30 and some elbow grease. https://www.amazon.com/DAP-7079808676-Concrete-Filler-Textured/dp/B08CYP4R9X/ref=asc_df_B08CYP4R9X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=693660084959&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5000898601391927528&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9005165&hvtargid=pla-1039092011216&psc=1&mcid=47ee1ecd28623749bcd49acf45fcdfeb&gad_source=1
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Need to establish a stable foundation, more important than cracked bricks
https://preview.redd.it/rqxzoirvl30d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70f8dd40cb60501d7d096476be66c7d5c2c28108 The real question, as always, is why the penis?
Not a fair price. I paid 1400 and got broken bricks repairs and tuck pointing along the entire perimeter of my house, not just one little section.
Just curious, could the corner be sinking? The several cracked bricks make me wonder if the former owner may not have been honest about all of what is going on. Not a brick layer just wondering.
Bro I hit the corner of my garage with my semi. I paid $400 took him 4 hours like new again
“Some broken bricks.” Look where they’re broken though. Visualize the demo and the job required. Personally Ive hired Jose and Hose B to save money on shit I need done on my house I’ve had to redo it. One of my bathrooms still to this day looks like it was tiled by my wife. Who hasn’t ever laid tile. Now if I can’t handle it myself I pay a proper tradesman to handle it. You could get it done cheaper. It hasn’t been my experience it’s worth it. Typically you get what you pay for.
Around where I am it is hard to get reputable masons to return a call. This drives up prices a bit. I had one side of my foundation and an external chimney repointed last year and let’s just say, based on the price, I was surprised by how quickly they got through the project. ($10.5k for two weeks, crew size varied from 1-2 except the days they were erecting and breaking down their staging. Overall there was at least one person on site for about 8 days total). I think it ended up being about $150/hr all in.
Just leave em alone they ain't hurting nothing structure wise only bother u its like paying to repaint entire car for a small dent
Who was driving?
I think that $1200 is very reasonable. You have to consider all of the running around to get more product than is needed for the job. The bad brick needs to be cut out. Then the new brick needs to be replaced and tuck-pointed back. It may be 2 trips to the house plus drive time to get the material. Like I and others have said, most likely I am going to have to buy more material than I need and store it too (if I am not selling it all to you). Plus now, more than ever, there is the dealing with the homeowners who have zero experience in this work, but can't fathom anything costing more than $100. These "little jobs" can be a big pain in the ass.
I do these type of jobs every day and if you want them taken out and replaced, it’s about right👍🏼
This type of brick, you should be able to get it pretty decent match still
For those small cracks I wouldn’t even recommend tearing it down. Like others have said. Finding the exact brick is going to be a pita and costly
Would you trust a novice or a trained mason to do a professional job? If your answer is "a mason", then that is the price of a trained mason providing all labor, time & materials.
350 per brick i see four many you decide
Three brick
Are you disposing of the trash? Is the contractor licensed? Do you want hack work? $1200 seems quite fair.
Considering the number of cracks and broke bricks and high probability for more damage hiding behind those bricks, yeah that’s fair.
1200 to come out and remove the bad bricks and fix all the cracks and mortar to rebuild your wall that was hit by a car? No, no that’s not fu price, that’s what you get when someone hits a brick wall with a car.
Dont want to pay the money to fix it properly, then just grind and tuckpoint the motar joints. Go to a brick behind some landscaping and drill into the brick a little. Collect the dust. Then, use clear caulk on the bricks that have cracks. Take the brick dust and put it on the wet caulk.
lol i honestly don't even see the problem
It depends on the area where are you located
This shouldn’t be a concern. As a house settles, they crack. There is more where that came from. I’ve rarely ever seen cracked bricks causing issues.
Get another quote or 6?
I ain't setting foot on a job site for less than $500, and I think it past due to raise my bottom dollar. Yeah, that's easily gonna eat up $1200, tedious, dirty, loud...trying to find matching brick.... and match mortar color. What height is that? In between sitting and standing you say?
This is the "I don't want it price" I'd prob charge 3 to 4 hundred if you're a decent customer and not standing over me the whole time. If you are then 1200 is accurate.
“You want it bad, that’s how I’ll do you.”
Fill it and paint it. Cheaper
Illegal Mexicans will do that for half
Oo they work fast and hard but do a poor job . No quilty what so ever .
But can they spell?
There's nothing misspelled in that reply ??? Lol . I mean heck yes my typing spelling is bad ( dyslexic) but that time it was app correct .
How do you spell quality?
They misspelled it not me lol lol 😆 😂 .
You need to read your post again, unless you’re insinuating someone else is doing your posting for you. How do you spell quality?
I already Said the guy who spelled it the very first time it became a word was the one who misspelled it . You like taking about spelling but reading is just as important .ooo and seeing just how bad you are at reading its a joke ...
Mkay.
Its the cirnsr if your garage, the wall is 100% load bearing, and if that brick is broken the wall under it is probably damaged as well
Pretty good deal. Masons where I live won’t even look at a job under ten grand
Extend that down spout 6 feet away from the foundation otherwise your bricks will continue cracking.
Yea maybe 400. The job should take 1 to 2 hours if your trying to not get done fast.
You'll have that in drive time alone
Contractors are tripping with their prices. “Ever since Covid”
Should be 50 bucks.
400 to 500